


Old Regrets

by hauntedjaeger (saellys)



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Cunnilingus, Depression, Femdom, Flashbacks, Multi, Pegging, Polyamory Negotiations, Suicidal Thoughts, Threesome - F/F/M, Trust Issues, Woman on Top
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-09-27
Updated: 2015-09-27
Packaged: 2018-04-23 14:55:22
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,744
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4881115
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saellys/pseuds/hauntedjaeger
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She shouldn’t test him. She certainly shouldn’t use Merrill to test him. But he did say… </p><p>“I can stop,” Merrill says.  </p><p>Anders holds Hawke’s gaze a moment longer, and then pushes his face back into the pillow. He says something. “Sorry?” Merrill prompts.  </p><p>“I said, I trust you,” Anders grates. “In this, at least.” </p><p>“Oh,” Merrill says, pleased. “That’s good, because I don’t think Hawke--” she moves her finger, and Anders goes taut in a new way--”would have any idea how to do this.”</p>
            </blockquote>





	Old Regrets

In the Free Marches the season turns chill, and Hawke curses when she climbs into bed, too far from the fire. Anders, forever anticipating her wants, goes to the chest for the heavier quilts. Under the topmost one, he finds it. 

“I should probably feel inadequate, but instead I’m intrigued.” Hawke looks up to see him considering the adahlath: gently curved, nearly the length of Hawke’s forearm, with a small bough sprouting from the middle and bending toward one tip, where a single plump and expertly carved leaf curls back on itself like a scroll. Other leaves in low relief twine gently around the wood. In the firelight, the oiled finish gleams like silk. 

“That,” Hawke says with a suddenly too-dry mouth, “was a gift.” 

When she was given it, she didn’t understand its purpose right away; Hawke has never been quick on the uptake with that sort of thing. Anders, however, possesses the equipment it is meant to approximate, and he has a broader range of experience than Hawke, so of course he comprehends at once. “From Isabela, I suppose.” 

She’s so flushed now the extra quilt is unnecessary. On a rational level, she knows that when he brings up Isabela, it’s because of his own insecurity. 

On an irrational level, she is sick of being teased about something that happened ages ago, and resents that he has to be reminded, reassured, that she brought him into her home to stay. “No,” she says flatly, and for the first time he looks up from where his long fingers are tracing the motif. “Merrill made it for me.” 

At that he regards the adahlath with suspicion, like it might be bloodstained or cursed or both, and Hawke sighs. “I’ve never used it.” She turns away from him, onto her side facing the fire, pulls the blanket to her chin, and shuts her eyes. 

_I’ve been practicing with the Arulin’Holm_ , Merrill told her two years earlier, _and I want you to have this_. 

_This is splendid, Merrill. You have a gift for sculpture._

_Oh no, it isn’t a sculpture_. Her voice took on her customary didactic lilt, and Hawke thought, not for the first time, that Merrill would have been a marvelous Keeper. _It’s an adahlath. Nearly everyone in my clan had one, usually made from old or broken staffs. It’s a tool_ , she said. _For pleasure_. 

The full meaning dawned on Hawke then. Andraste’s tits, did everyone know how long it had been since she’d had a good lay? She must have let something slip in her expression, because Merrill’s face fell. _Fenedhis. I’m sorry, Hawke, I forget how different humans are, the Dalish are just so_ open _, I can carve you something else--_

_Merrill._ Wide green eyes looked up at her. _This is very sweet, and I’m going to treasure it. Thank you._ A smile broke on Merrill’s face like a sunbeam. 

“Never,” Anders echoes. The mattress shifts under his weight. “Not even once, out of curiosity?”

Hawke cracks one eyelid, then turns to find him leaning against the headboard. His fingertip absently strokes the little recessed spot just beneath the curled leaf, but his eyes are on her, and there’s a challenge in them. “Seems an awful waste, to keep it locked away in a trunk.” 

She can’t find any words, so in answer she turns onto her back, bending her knees slightly. Anders presents the adahlath to her, and Hawke grabs it, shoves it under the covers and works by feel. When the little bough pokes up against the sheet and the leaf tip is at her entrance, cool and smooth, she hesitates. She’s tense, and not wet enough.  

“Should I touch you?” Anders murmurs, close to her ear. 

Not yet. But she needs--something. “A while ago,” Hawke says, and then swallows. “You said… in the Circle in Ferelden.” Her eyes are locked on the canopy, but she hears him breathe in through his nose. He understands. _Everyone was kissing everyone_ , he said. “Talk to me about that,” she says, then hastily adds, “if you want.” 

Anders lets out the breath, warm on her cheek. “Most of us were teenagers,” he begins, voice soft. “Love--I wouldn’t call it that, really, but it was as close as anyone got--it was a way to pass time, make ourselves forget where we were. Karl was… Karl taught me many things.” 

Hawke looks at him. “You don’t have to--”

“It’s fine. I’m fine.” He smiles and it takes some of the sadness from his eyes. “We all had favorites. But we sampled each other, as well. Like a dish you’ve never tried before. Boys. Girls. When the Templars brought someone new… Well, it was something to look forward to, and we hadn’t much of that.

“But we were instructed to act with decorum, so there was a great deal of sneaking about by night. Into each other’s cells, or whatever dark corners we could find between the Templars’ rounds. We learned to do things quietly.” And at this last his voice hushes further, as if they are in one of those dark corners now, and if Hawke shuts her eyes against the fire’s glow she can imagine they are, that instead of cold sheets there is a cold wall at her back and this must be done quickly and silently. 

She takes the far end of the adahlath and eases it up between her legs. The leaf head crosses her threshold. Though she is wet, she’s still too tight and if the leaf wasn’t belled so, she would likely push it back out. As it is, the muscles of her core clench at nothing. She’s stretched and full in the wrong place, not nearly deep enough. 

But she doesn’t make a sound beyond a pant. Anders has paused, guessing, she’s sure, at what is happening beneath the covers, but presently he goes on. “We got good at it,” he whispers over the pulse in her ears. “We experimented, and taught each other tricks. We learned to do things to each other without even touching.” 

Fancy-ass mages. Hawke spares a moment to wonder why he’s never done something like that to her, but doesn’t voice it. Instead she moves the adahlath deeper. Now that the leaf is in her, the shaft travels smoothly up her passage, broader than Anders’s cock, broad enough that it nearly burns, and the cool hard wood is a different sensation entirely. It’s unyielding, and her cunt grasps it so hard she feels the tracery against her walls. 

She can feel sweat on her brow. There’s a ragged edge to Anders’s voice now, and he leans up on one elbow. She opens her eyes and finds him studying her. “When one of us learned something new, a handful of others would gather to see, and try it. Then they shared it with the rest.” 

Hawke has no idea how to react to that, so she does the one thing she can think of: presses on the wood until it’s as far as it will go in her. She exhales like she’s been punched in the gut. She’s _full_ , gloriously, and what’s more, the little bough has come to rest above her cunt, so close-- 

She takes her hand away from the wood, and it rests heavy between her thighs. She thinks, with the part of her that’s still good for thinking, that someone else’s body might be able to do more with this. If she was made for something other than charging on the field of battle, if she had finer muscles, she could move in tiny, controlled ways, and that bough with its rough-sanded but smooth-finished tip would stroke again and again, while deep inside the leaf would knead insistently, until…  

But Hawke isn’t built that way, so she bucks her hips gracelessly. And that’s good too, good enough that her vision fades at the edges. “Anders,” she gasps, lifting her hands, and he takes them, holds them up by the headboard while she grinds beneath the covers. Her heels slip and she struggles to plant them again, gulping as the wood moves inside her in ways she didn’t intend but which are still _good_ , very, very good. She stills herself, looks up at Anders. “How many?” 

He squints. “How many was I with at once?” At her nod, he frowns thoughtfully, and then shrugs. Like this is nothing. “Five or six.” 

Hawke takes a shaky breath. “Get this thing out and finish me.” 

Anders puts one hand over both her wrists and uses the other to tear the covers off. Hawke lifts her head to look at the rounded end hanging free and large and obscene between her parted legs, and they both appreciate that view while Anders gets his breeches and smalls down one-handed. He’s as hard as she expected, his cock nearly purple from the strain. He wraps his long fingers around the hilt of the adahlath, and eases it out, following the curve of the wood so as not to hurt her. 

Her cunt clenches at the bottom of the leaf--her body doesn’t want it to go. Anders works it free as gently as he can, and then Hawke is distressingly empty. But he’s moving, he’s pressing into her and she is more than ready, and he plunges home all at once and lets out a soft moan. 

He’s not as filling as the adahlath, but he is familiar and warm and alive. When he rolls his hips, Hawke abandons the pretense of silence and secrecy and cries out, and he doesn’t pull back or thrust again, only moves at her deepest point until she tightens around him, arches her back, and holds her breath so long she’s at risk of blacking out. 

All at once she goes slack, limbs tingling. Something in Anders relaxes too, and he lets go of her wrists and lowers himself to her, cups her face in his hands, and when he moves it’s sweet and slow, nothing urgent or desperate about it. 

They are nowhere but in her bed by the fire, in the house where she promised him safety. She can feel in the way he moves, can hear in the sounds he makes, that he knows he’s safe and no one will use this against him. He sweeps away the lock of hair that is forever falling into her face, kisses her brow, and then licks the sweat from his lips like it’s nectar. She weaves her fingers into his hair.

He only speeds his pace when he’s close, and buries his face against the side of her neck and lets out a long, voiced sigh while he spills himself. He stills, pulls the quilt over both of them, and rests that way for a long time. Hawke moves just enough to clasp her hands behind his back. The weight of him on her is as solid and comfortable as her armor. Her body feels exquisitely wrung. She can sense sleep approaching like a wall of fog, and welcomes it. 

In her ear Anders murmurs, “Do you want to invite someone into our bed?” and just like that, Hawke is awake. 

“Do you?” she says after a hopelessly awkward pause. 

Anders lifts his head enough to look in her eyes. “Depends on who,” he says, and Hawke’s breath hitches. 

* * *

For all that she claims to be terrible at making friends, Merrill certainly seems to know everyone in the Lowtown bazaar. Every few steps she greets someone else and asks after the health of all their distant relatives, and that makes it doubly hard for Hawke to carry on this rather delicate conversation. 

She had thought it would be easier on Merrill if she brings it up in public--then the elf can flee home if it’s too mortifying. But as Merrill strikes up a conversation with a ragged grey dog loitering by a stew pot, Hawke longs for privacy. She’s never approached someone about this sort of thing before. She should have asked Anders for advice. Now he lags a few yards behind them, pretending to consider an array of empty potion bottles. 

“Merrill,” Hawke says when the mage finally pries herself away from the mutt, “I’ve been meaning to ask about the… branch… you made for me.”  

Merrill peers at her, and then her eyes widen. “The adah--” Remembering the crowd, she closes her mouth and makes a prompting noise. 

Hawke nods. “I tried it, but I don’t think I did it right.” 

“Oh, I’m sure you did; it takes a little acclimation.” Merrill takes a breath to go on and then stops herself again, and Hawke wonders if she just missed out on a discourse about the similarities between Elvhen and human genitals. 

“I was wondering,” Hawke says, careful to stick to the script she planned, “if you’d be comfortable showing me how it’s meant to work.” 

“How--oh.” Merrill stares at her. “I.” She cranes her neck to glance around Hawke. “Will Anders be at home?” 

Hawke tries a smile that she hopes is reassuring. “That’s up to you.” 

Merrill bites her lip. “Could I take some time to think about it?” 

“Of course. See you at the Hanged Man this evening?” 

Hawke does see her there, but she’s even more quiet in the group than usual, and when Hawke and Anders have had their fill of ale and Diamondback and Isabela’s bawdy stories, Merrill doesn’t get up to follow them out the door. 

“Did she say anything to you?” Anders says when they’re home. 

“No.” Hawke sighs as she pulls off her boots. “It’s been less than a day. I spooked her, is all.” 

Anders hmmphs, yanking his shirt over his head. “At least something spooks her.” 

“Just… whatever happens, don’t be terrible to her about this?” 

He sputters. “Terrible?”  

Hawke gives him a look. When he’s out with her and Merrill, Anders is as antagonistic as Fenris, though he says everything in the guise of concern for her safety. It’s infantilizing and infuriating, and somehow Merrill always responds with poise. Hawke isn’t sure what she’d do if that wasn’t the case--hard enough to keep peace in Kirkwall, let alone among her companions. 

“Who can I be terrible to, then?” Anders asks, pitching his voice lower. He walks across the carpet to loom before her. “Can I be terrible to you?” He drops to his knees and gazes up at her, which quite ruins the effect. “How terrible would you like me to be?” Hawke snorts and shoves his shoulder. 

“Oh.” They both turn, and in the doorway Merrill starts to back away. “I should have sent word ahead. I’m sorry. Only it took me so long to work up the nerve, I thought I should hurry here before I changed my mind. I didn’t mean to interrupt your evening. I’ll just--”

“Merrill,” Hawke says, and Merrill quiets. “We’re glad you’re here.” 

The elf smiles, then glances uncertainly to Anders, who has gotten up to close the drapes. 

“You’re very beautiful, Merrill,” he says, and Hawke spares him a glance because he’s using _that_ voice, the one that would get him a free night at the Rose. (The one that would get him hired at the Rose.) His expression is soft, his eyes earnest, and Hawke thinks that just maybe this will go well after all. 

Merrill’s nervous laugh bubbles up, and now it’s Hawke she turns to. “He’s right,” Hawke says through a smile. “Won’t you sit?” 

She does, in the chair at the desk, which is much too far away for Hawke’s liking. “Perhaps you could, ehm, show me what you did with the adahlath?” 

Anders takes the tool down from over the fireplace, offers it to Hawke. She takes the warm dark wood and lays back on the mattress. With her free hand she unties her breeches. “Despite our lack of experience,” Anders says, rounding the bed to take his place beside her, “it was very effective.” 

“Oh, of course it was!” Merrill replies. “We Dalish have had a few thousand years to perfect the design.” She looks to Hawke again, and her gaze is hungry. Hawke nearly has the leaf head inside; she’s sufficiently wet and knows what’s coming this time. “That’s good, Hawke,” Merrill says softly, and the words and the tone make something itch deep in Hawke’s brain. When did… 

“Anders, what were you doing the first time?” 

“I… spoke to her.” A full reenactment won’t be happening, Hawke thinks as she slides the adahlath further in. Firstly because Merrill needs to see everything, and secondly because Anders wouldn’t repeat all of that for anyone. “About my time in the Circle.” 

“Well, if the Circle is that arousing, I ought to turn myself in.” The joke falls flat--Hawke is too preoccupied with the fullness inside her to indulge Merrill with a smile. “You didn’t touch her?” 

“She didn’t ask me to. And I thought, ah, not touching her was more or less the point.” 

“As fun as that can be, participation usually enhances things.” And then Merrill gets up, and Hawke lifts her head to see the mage removing her scarf, vestments, and maille. Maker. Underneath it all is a segmented bodice that looks like rather more formidable armor than what she had over it. Merrill crosses the carpet to stand at Hawke’s side of the bed. “Some pressure helps. May I?” 

Hawke nods, expecting Merrill’s hands on her, but the elf climbs onto the bed and straddles Hawke’s hips instead, looks into Hawke’s eyes, and settles halfway between Hawke’s navel and mound. 

“Breathe, love,” Anders whispers after a moment, and Hawke realizes she hasn’t been doing that. She gasps, and there’s a whine in it. 

Merrill is light, so small and light that Hawke could be forgiven for thinking her fragile, if she hadn’t seen the mage in a fight. And she is in precisely the right spot: a place on Hawke’s body where there is an extra measure of flesh to cushion her, but beneath it the adahlath’s head is pressed firmly where it will do the most good, and Merrill’s weight has shifted the wood in such a way that the bough in the middle brushes Hawke’s clitoris. 

Merrill sets her small, cool hands under Hawke’s tunic, just below the long scar across Hawke’s stomach, and again she says, “That’s good, Hawke,” and now Hawke remembers: 

The duel with the Arishok. It wasn’t like the stories went, the beaten Qunari stumbling away from Hawke on the stairs of the viscount’s chamber, declaring that they would return, dying on the end of her sword. Instead there was the excruciating vertigo of being lifted by the blade in her gut, nearly choking on her own blood before she grasped the Qunari’s right horn with her shield arm and fished the dagger from her belt. She couldn’t put her back into it, couldn’t follow through, but the weak stroke across his throat was enough. His blood sprayed her face, over the birthmark. He dropped her, and Hawke kept her eyes open long enough to watch him die. 

It was good, she thought as a noise like a river drowned out the shouts in the viscount’s chamber. It was good to die this way. Better at the hands of someone who respected her than a Lowtown gang or templar or dragon. It was good that it meant something. 

Maybe they’d make a statue of her. Taller than her. The citizens would adorn it with flowers. Little girls with wooden swords and platters strapped to their arms would play at her feet. In a couple generations, the significance of her would be forgotten, like all heroes. People would pass by without looking on their way to the marketplace. 

A new spike of pain brought her back--someone took out the Arishok’s sword. Hawke coughed up more blood and blinked her eyes open. Bastarding Fenris. She should have brought someone else when all of this started; then she wouldn’t be in this position and the day would have ended, fittingly, with another bloodbath. 

Anders pressed a cloth over the wound, against the flow of what little blood remained in Hawke’s body. _I have to focus_ , he said, but not to Hawke. _Keep her awake_.

Small hands lifted Hawke’s shoulders, and her head came to rest against Merrill’s green vestments. _That’s good, Hawke_ , Merrill said. _Eyes open now_.

She kept them open, though her vision swam. Merrill talked, the way only Merrill could, a stream of consciousness that Hawke barely registered. As she rambled, she gently cleaned the blood off Hawke’s face with a damp kerchief. 

… _not that I doubted you, of course. I mean, maybe when he stuck you clean through, I nearly looked away because I just couldn’t think how you’d get out of that one, but of course you did. It’s just so much foolishness. Such a stupid, brave thing to do. You saved so many lives today…_

She should have gone alone. She was weary of earning everyone’s favor, being everyone’s errand girl. She had been sick of it since the day she set foot in Kirkwall, and found that she was the only level-headed person in the whole place. Four years she’d walked this diplomatic tightrope, and all it had ever gotten her was impaled. She ought to die, just to be a lesson to anyone else who tries to navigate the city without choosing sides. 

If Hawke had gone alone, she’d already be dead. If she hadn’t asked Anders along she’d be dead. If she hadn’t gone to get Merrill before the docks, she’d ignore Anders now and stubbornly die anyway. 

... _and as soon as he’s finished we’ll get out of this awful place and take you home. We’ll set you by the fire, lethallan, and Anders will cuddle you, and Fenris will read you a book, and I’ll bring you a glass of mulled wine_.

_Brandy_ , Hawke wheezed. 

Merrill smiled down at her and wiped the kerchief across the bridge of Hawke’s nose last, where it was hardest to tell if she was clean. _Feeling better already_ , she observed. 

And Hawke did feel better, though not without pain in the places where her guts were knit back together. Anders was forever reminding her that magic can’t take away pain. Not the sort that comes from healing, anyway. 

_That’s all but the skin_ , Anders said, letting one of the globes of light in his hands flicker out. _Another moment--_  

Hawke reached for him. _Stitch it._ She wanted the scar. She wanted to remember. 

Anders leaned down and kissed her, hard. He pressed her against Merrill’s lap, and if Hawke were a little less exhausted she would spare a thought for how awkward that was, but Merrill only put her hand against Hawke’s hair to steady her. 

Somewhere beyond the little sphere of warmth Hawke was in, Fenris made a sour noise, and Hawke had never felt so loved, surrounded by all these people who simply refused, no matter how tired she got, to let her die. 

“Did you move your hips the first time, lethallan?” Merrill says. 

“That’s… the part I got wrong, I think.” Hawke looks up at Merrill’s finely muscled limbs. Hers is the sort of body--

Merrill moves, and Hawke makes a sound she’s never made before. The elf rocks a handspan forward and a handspan backward, measured and controlled, knees digging into the mattress. Inside Hawke the adahlath moves, deliciously. Outside Hawke the little bough works at her, and she’s lost to sensation, drowning in it, the rush in her ears louder and louder. 

“Anders,” Merrill says somewhere above her, “this would be a good time to touch Hawke.” 

He is upon her at once, one palm at her breast, the other hand in her hair, lips moving from neck to ear to neck, and Hawke trembles. “You look close,” he murmurs, toying with her right nipple through her shirt and completely neglecting the left. “You sound close. You are, aren’t you?” 

Hawke whimpers. 

“Go faster, Merrill.” 

Merrill goes faster. Her hands don’t move, but she runs one thumb along the scar. Anders catches Hawke’s earlobe between his lips and suckles on it. They are undoing her. The rush overtakes her. Hawke strains, groans long and low. 

Too soon, Merrill climbs off her, but she makes no move to take out the adahlath. Hawke’s muscles tighten and release around it in the wake of her climax. She aches in all the right ways. Her sweat cools, but Anders is warm at her side. 

“What did you do next, lethallan?” At Hawke’s stare, Merrill adds, “Don’t tell me you didn’t try it in Anders?” 

In the same instant that Anders draws a breath, Hawke realizes why the adahlath’s handle is so long. 

“There’s oil by the bath,” Anders says, and Merrill, smiling, goes to fetch it. Anders leans up on his elbows and regards Hawke. This must have already occurred to him; was he waiting? “Go easy on me. It’s been ye--” 

Hawke takes a handful of his hair and pulls him to her. His lips are eager, and he slides her tunic up and off as Hawke arches her back. They’re still kissing when Merrill returns; she lets out a squeak and Hawke pulls away to make sure there’s not a mouse in the room. “I’m sorry,” Merrill says at once, “the two of you are just so pretty, it does things to me.” 

Anders turns away to take his breeches off, but Hawke sees the flash of his grin--and glimpses his erection before he lays face down on his side of the bed. Hawke can’t be sure, but she thinks she felt dampness through the thin fabric where Merrill moved against her. 

Slowly Hawke sits up, mindful of the adahlath, and of how sore she’ll be tomorrow. She reads the tension in Anders’s back. Hawke doesn’t know much about this sort of thing, but she knows it will never work if he’s locked up. She holds out a hand and Merrill places the little glass bottle in it. 

Hawke puts one finger into the oil, holds it over Anders’s freckled shoulders, and lets it drip. Then she traces a line from the drop to the knurls of his spine, and down. She repeats the process until the lines start to look, well... like vallaslin. 

With one hand she keeps drawing on Anders’s back. With the other, she hands the bottle back to Merrill, and meets her questioning look with a nod. 

_Only if you trust her_ , she said to Anders, after she made the suggestion the night before. 

He sat and thought about it for a long time. _With my life in battle, regularly_ , he admitted. _And with yours_. 

_Battle isn’t our bed_.   

Hawke runs her hand through the lines, spreading the oil, and then she flattens both hands at his shoulders and sweeps down, putting her weight into it. Anders sighs into the pillow, and she feels him ease. 

And then Merrill presses her oiled finger between his nates. Anders flinches, grunts, his shoulders knotting up at once. He lifts his head from the pillow just enough to give Hawke a look that burns. 

She shouldn’t test him. She certainly shouldn’t use Merrill to test him. But he did say… 

“I can stop,” Merrill says.  

Anders holds Hawke’s gaze a moment longer, and then pushes his face back into the pillow. He says something. “Sorry?” Merrill prompts.  

“I said, I trust you,” Anders grates. “In this, at least.” 

“Oh,” Merrill says, pleased. “That’s good, because I don’t think Hawke--” she moves her finger, and Anders goes taut in a new way--”would have any idea how to do this.” 

Hawke stretches herself diagonally across Anders’s back. The adahlath’s rounded end rests against his hip. “Merrill’s right,” she says in Anders’s ear, which has gone very red. “I don’t know how to make that feel good, and I want you to feel good, Anders, because you’re so good to me.” She runs her hand down his right side. “None of us are accustomed to being at someone else’s mercy, are we? Let Merrill work. Open up, Anders.” 

Merrill tries two fingers, and Anders shudders. “I never…” 

“Never did this? Don’t lie. You’re bad at lying.” 

He turns his face toward her. “I never thought I’d have you like this.” 

Hawke lifts a few honey-colored strands of hair from where they cling to his brow, and smiles at him. “Who’s having whom?” He shudders again. 

“Hawke, feel him.” Hawke reaches toward Merrill, and Merrill takes her wrist and and presses one of Hawke’s fingers in next to the three she has put there. Warm. Smooth. Tight. Anders swallows air. “He’ll be ready soon.” 

“I’m ready now,” Anders says, and the last word is still in his throat when Hawke is in motion, pulling Merrill over to take her place on the mattress. 

Carefully Hawke sets her knees on either side of Anders’s hips. Carefully she puts the rounded end against him. “You’re sure?” she asks. 

“ _Please_ , Marian,” Anders says, and Hawke moves. 

It’s not that she’s ever wanted to have a cock. There isn’t anything about her body she’d change, despite her admiration of Merrill’s grace. And it’s not that using the adahlath in Anders is anything at all like having a cock--Hawke can’t actually feel how deep she is in him, can’t feel his warmth or the way he tightens around the wood like he did around her finger and Merrill’s, and that’s a shame. 

What Hawke can feel is the way the adahlath pushes back when she pushes in, and Hawke aches from having it in her so long, but this symmetry is worth it. What she can feel is Anders bending out of reflex, his hips canting up, trying to take more of the wood. His ribs move beneath his skin as he struggles for air. 

“Marian,” he says again, and she leans. 

What Hawke can feel is the difference between being on top of him with him in her, and being on top of him as well as in him. Gravity is on her side. Her hips move differently. Curious, she tries a shallow thrust, and all at once she understands men who only use this position. It feels like power--particularly when Anders makes a sound that starts deep in his chest and climbs a register or two on its way out. Higher, not louder, which means pain that’s good. Hawke draws back, and Anders turns his face to the pillow once more. 

“What else should I do?” Hawke says to Merrill.  

The elf smiles at her, eyes gleaming. “Don’t ask me. He knows what he likes.” 

“Anders?” 

His shoulders tense, release. So do his hips; how she wishes she could feel what he’s doing inside. “Talk while you fuck me,” he says at last. 

Hawke tries a thrust that isn’t shallow. Anders clutches the pillow with both hands. She pulls back an inch, thinking of Merrill’s finesse. 

“Next time,” Hawke says, and drives forward again, “we’re doing this first, when I have plenty of stamina. Can you imagine? We might peak in unison.” He is imagining it, judging by the flush that creeps down his back. She’s not in danger of climaxing again anytime soon--in fact, it verges on uncomfortable now, holding the wood in place with her core so she can keep her hands on Anders’s hips. She’s nearly dry and she might rub herself raw, but she’ll see this through. She’s stubborn like that, and the sight of him this way is too good to stop now. 

“How soon should we do this again?” she says. “I think I ought to make you wait.” In tiny increments she rocks further into him. Anders mewls into the pillow. “You’d like it if this was all we ever did from now on.” At that, his hips roll against the sheet. “You’d like it very much,” Hawke repeats, unable to stifle her grin. “What a fine gift Merrill made us, and here I thought at first it was just for me. How do you plan to thank her?” 

His knuckles go white. “Turn your head and say it,” Hawke tells him, pulling back. 

Anders turns his face toward the fire, toward Merrill, struggling to focus his gaze. “However she wants,” he pants. 

Hawke pushes, and all the breath goes out of Anders at once. “However you want, Merrill. Isn’t that kind?” Merrill licks her lips, eyes wider than ever, and something falls into place for Hawke, years late. “If Anders is what you want, that is.” 

“Fenedhis lasa,” Merrill hisses. 

Hawke smiles at her, aware of how wolfish it must look in this circumstance. She stays in Anders as deep as the adahlath will let her, and pivots her hips. Anders cries out, so she does it again. Twice more and his lips part, his eyes glaze, his breath stutters. 

Hawke lays her head between Anders’s shoulderblades and listens to his heart pound. She runs one hand through his hair and holds what little of the adahlath she can touch with the other. Careful not to move it in him, she lifts her hips until the leaf exits her cunt, and then, slowly, removes it from Anders. When it’s gone he lets out a massive sigh. 

“I don’t suppose you brought another of these?” Hawke says to Merrill. 

“I left mine home.” 

“Pity.” Hawke kisses Anders’s shoulder and gets up, jelly-legged and tired and not nearly finished. “What _do_ you want, Merrill? What made you come here tonight?” 

Merrill stares at her, and then puts her hands on Hawke’s face and kisses her, long and deep. 

“It was just for you,” Merrill says abruptly, pulling away from Hawke’s lips just far enough to speak. “I mean, at the time. When you were still alone. We all had a good laugh at Aveline’s marigolds, but I was taking notes and I thought this would be easier to understand. I thought you’d try it and come to me for advice, like you did, but just… sooner than you did. Before. You know.” She huffs. “All my plans go like that.” 

Hawke looks into her eyes, and can’t find the right words. She shifts on the mattress and angles her body closer, lowers her head to Merrill’s shoulder. The elf puts her arms around Hawke at once. Anders is watching them. “My skull’s thicker than dragonscale,” Hawke tries. She was in a bad way then, and couldn’t see beyond her own problems. Still can’t, sometimes. “I’m sorry, Merrill.” 

Merrill strokes her hair. “What’s done is done, lethallan.” 

“I can leave,” Anders says. “Only… I don’t think I can walk right now.” 

“No, lethallin! This is your place.” Merrill draws a breath. “I should go.” 

Hawke catches her hand as she gets up. “Merrill, this can be your place too. What’s done is done, but mistakes can be fixed.” Merrill stares. “This one can, at any rate.” 

The silence stretches; in the fireplace, the logs are dimming. Finally Merrill looks away. “I need to think on it.” 

“There’s time,” Hawke assures her. 

Merrill gathers her things from the chair and makes for the door, but Anders rolls to his side and leans up and says her name, and she pauses, her back to them. “Thank you,” Anders says. 

Her dark hair bobs as she nods, and then she slips through the bedroom door. 

“Well,” Anders sighs as he cleans himself with his shirt, “I’ve graduated to lethallin, and it only took her putting her fingers up my arse.” 

“Don’t be terrible,” Hawke says automatically, her thoughts elsewhere. 

Anders tugs her arm until she relents and stretches across the bed, her head on his chest. He combs his fingers through her hair. “You fucked all the terrible out of me for tonight, love.” His fingers still. “I want her to come back to us as much as you do.” 

“Actually,” Merrill says, and Hawke sits up at once, “I didn’t even make it out the front door.” 

_And if she stays?_ Anders asked her the night before. _She’ll want to. You have that effect on people._

_Marvelous_ , Hawke said, only partly joking. _Have you noticed I’m trying to fill this house with absolutely anyone_ not _related to me? Bodahn, Sandal, Orana, you, why not Merrill too? Hell, after that, all we need is Fenris._

_If you even joke about that in fro_ \--

_Isabela?_

He raised a finger in warning and rounded the bed toward her. 

_Surely there’s room for Varric!_  

She made an undignified sound somewhere between a laugh and a shriek, and half-attempted to dodge him, but he tackled her to the mattress. And then grew still in a way she knew, and when Hawke looked up he was looking down at her, and he said, _Are you happy with me?_

_Anders_. She kissed his brow. _Yes. Nothing will change that, ever._

He blew out a breath. _Then it’s naught to me_ , he lied. 

The carpet before the fireplace is plush, but Hawke knows from experience that after a while it feels as hard as the bare floor, so she gets more quilts and furs from the chest and every pillow from the bed except the one under Anders. Merrill reclines in a nest of all Hawke’s bedding, with freshly stoked firelight dancing on her vallaslin, and Hawke kisses her as she unwraps the complicated bodice. 

When Merrill is bare, Hawke undoes her own breastband, and the elf’s eyes drink her in. Hawke takes account. Neck: slender like the rest of Merrill, pale and exceedingly kissable. Clavicle: artfully shaped, sensitive to Hawke’s fingertips. Breasts: perfect. Waist: a very good place to put hands in the event that breasts are unavailable. Navel: shallow, prettier than it has any right to be, with a slope of soft flesh beneath that brings Hawke to--

Cunt: not so different at all. 

Hips: narrow, shapely, pushing up to meet Hawke’s mouth. Legs: over Hawke’s shoulders, strong. Feet: somehow simultaneously dainty and callused against Hawke’s back. 

Flavor: _good_. 

Hawke tastes, and tastes, and Merrill tangles her fingers in Hawke’s hair and whispers things in Elvish and the soft words blend with the pop of logs on the fire. 

Tonight has been an exception all around to Hawke’s general rule of not being goal-oriented in bed, and she would like to stay here, tasting, until dawn and after that. Let Kirkwall hang itself on its own Gallows. 

But when one wants something for years and finally, finally has it, one can be forgiven for losing oneself early. Merrill’s cry at climax is a fluttering thing, and Hawke takes her hands off those perfect breasts and kisses her way back up Merrill’s body to her lips. “Again?” she says after letting Merrill taste herself. 

“No,” Merrill breathes. “That’s good, Hawke. For now.” 

So she puts one arm under the fur and pillows behind Merrill’s shoulders and the other under her knees, and Hawke lifts with her legs. Carrying Merrill wouldn’t normally be difficult, but Hawke’s calves are tight and she has to take mincing steps to keep her balance. Likewise, piecing together what she knows of the Elvhen language wouldn’t normally be difficult, but, well. It’s been a rough night for coherent thought. 

By the time she lays Merrill on the mattress, nearest the fire, she thinks she has it. “Ma an?” 

Merrill blinks up at her. “Emma an,” she agrees drowsily. “Emma lath.” Hawke smiles and kisses her, then climbs over Merrill to the open place in the middle of the bed. Anders gives her his pillow and, when she’s settled on her back, makes one for himself at her chest, and pulls the covers over all of them. 

It’s warm there, between them. Hawke wishes she knew that sooner. 

What’s done is done, and regrets can’t be swept away any more than scars or the pain that made them. They’re both for remembering, and it’s easy to get lost in looking back, easy to feel alone. Looking forward--moving forward… 

Hawke gently sets the back of her hand against the vallaslin on Merrill’s cheekbone. In her sleep Merrill turns toward her touch. Anders is solid and warm on Hawke’s chest. 

Moving forward is something they’ll have to do together. 

**Author's Note:**

> AND NOTHING BAD HAPPENED AFTER THAT, THE END
> 
> I was about a half inch from posting this anonymously under a dump account, but the marvelous beta comments of nerdacious, mswyrr, and Vongchild convinced me to put my name to it.


End file.
